Western Standard - Prof Frances Widdowson on cancel culture & the threats to post secondary education

00:00:00.000 Okay. Hello, Professor Whittowson. Welcome back to the show. I appreciate you coming on to talk

00:00:04.380 to us today. Thanks for having me on. Great. And I did have you on before, I think it was last year

00:00:09.460 at some point. What we had spoken of, maybe just to give a recap, because not all of our audience

00:00:13.660 members might be familiar with the history of it, but you had been instructing for some time at

00:00:18.820 Mount Royal University, and basically they violated the principles of tenure and you got

00:00:25.900 removed from there. Can you kind of give a little background on what happened there?

00:00:28.280 Yes. So I originally, up until 2020, was just asking questions about various, what is considered

00:00:37.440 to be woke areas, which is identity politics that has become totalitarian in the university.

00:00:44.460 This was disliked by a whole bunch of people. And then with the George Floyd killing and

00:00:51.020 Wendy Mesley's being kicked out of the CBC, or she wasn't fired, but she was pretty much removed from 0.91

00:00:57.440 things for mentioning the title of Pierre Valier's book, White Niggers of America. I defended her and

00:01:04.820 then a mob went after me, about 40 professors. And because of Mount Royal's changing of its policies

00:01:13.400 around social media, which you didn't let anyone know about, they basically used that change in policy

00:01:20.600 policy to have me removed from Mount Royal University.

00:01:24.260 Yeah. And I mean, it's to not even be able to speak to these things, because for example, I mean,

00:01:31.340 the Wendy Mesley example you're speaking of is an interesting one, because this is a very progressive

00:01:35.660 person. This was a person who's been well established at the CBC for a long time, a long career,

00:01:40.980 very much a progressive, certainly no indications of racism. But she'd mentioned a book by title, which has,

00:01:47.460 yeah, it's an offensive word, I can't stand that word. But it was, it's context, you're mentioning

00:01:52.320 the title of a book in preparation for a show. And that was all it took to completely destroy a career

00:01:59.720 that spanned decades, because context doesn't matter anymore.

00:02:02.820 Yeah. And the fact that no one defended her, and the fact that I defended her, and then got

00:02:08.220 basically taken out for defending her, just shows you the madness that is happening, especially at a

00:02:15.260 university where referring to book titles is something that we have to do. And I myself have

00:02:22.060 done research on Quebec nationalism, and have used that book title. So what am I supposed to do? I'm

00:02:28.260 not supposed to be referring to that book title, I just don't understand where all this is going. So

00:02:33.000 that's the kind of self censorship and fear that is permeating throughout universities that we need to

00:02:41.020 push back on push back hard right now, before they start to put people in jail for putting forward

00:02:48.620 ideas that are considered to be quote, unquote, incorrect.

00:02:53.020 Well, that's it. And universities, I mean, they traditionally they reformed, I mean, it was supposed

00:02:57.620 to be a place where you're going to have critical discourse, you're going to have discussion, people

00:03:01.440 don't have to agree, a professor might truly be haywire, and offensive and off the rails. Oh, well,

00:03:07.060 that's the way it goes. Debate it, move on. Don't, don't go to that professor's courses. That's what

00:03:13.860 you've got to protect it. I mean, it was considered extreme for professors to talk about racial

00:03:18.820 integration in schools in the American in the United States back in the 40s and 50s, they were

00:03:22.740 risking their careers by coming out in favor of it. Thankfully, there were protections, so they

00:03:27.380 could push for that, and we got better. But now, we've got a group think mentality, and it's chilling

00:03:33.780 any kind of discourse. Yes, and there's just a report that came out of the United States now,

00:03:39.380 and they're finding that professors are censoring more now than they were during the McCarthy era. So

00:03:46.020 things are really going off the rails, and it's not just Mount Royal University, you know, people might

00:03:53.140 want to focus on that, but that's really not the situation. We have problems all across the country,

00:04:00.500 and it is due to the fact that the academic character of universities and the acceptance of

00:04:06.820 the idea that you should be able to discuss all ideas at a university has now been completely

00:04:16.260 usurped by this idea that if you say something that is hurtful to a member of a particular group,

00:04:24.900 that should not be allowed because that's somehow making the university unsafe for those groups and

00:04:32.180 is excluding them from the university, when in fact it's actually excluding them from the university to

00:04:40.020 not enable them to become part of the conversation to try to determine many of the serious problems that

00:04:47.700 are facing indigenous people, for example, or trans activists or whatever the group might happen to

00:04:54.660 be that's being protected. Well, yeah, so getting to the more recent incident, you were invited by

00:05:00.180 another professor, Professor of Philosophy. Again, this is talking about an area of academia where you

00:05:06.260 should be expanding thought and discussing things that you were there invited to speak and word got out of

00:05:13.220 it and a haywire mob essentially shut you down. Yeah, that was quite a shocker. I'm used to

00:05:21.380 these incidents happening and often they're quite comical. And then to have to step out of the elevator

00:05:29.860 and to see this large public space just filled to the rafters with hundreds of people brandishing signs,

00:05:39.460 you know, saying, you know, no place for hate that they're in racism, free speech is not hate speech, all

00:05:45.220 these sorts of things, which, you know, okay, students like to blow off steam, we understand that it's often a, you

00:05:53.140 know, a big part of universities, but that's not really the problem. It's not really the students that I think are the

00:05:59.460 problem here. The problem is the administrators and the faculty, there are serious problems now with the

00:06:07.140 faculty not thinking that ideas can be discussed. A number of professors at the University of Lethbridge

00:06:14.260 actively supported the students. The history, history professor held a talk at the exact same time

00:06:21.380 that my talk was going to be given right from the beginning. And as well, the faculty association,

00:06:27.860 that is something that people should really take an interest in because it's the faculty associations

00:06:33.220 that defend professors' academic freedom and freedom of expression. This faculty association,

00:06:40.020 which is just horrendous, the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association expressed concern about

00:06:48.340 hurtful speech on my part and the need to protect students and faculty from my speech.

00:06:55.380 I think that the faculty association should be taking forward that grievance and fighting hard against

00:07:15.780 the university. But of course, they're very unlikely to do so because they are actually responsible for

00:07:21.060 the terrible situation that exists at the University of Lethbridge.

00:07:25.460 Well, and you know, of all associations, you think an association of academia would understand

00:07:32.820 the dangers of appeasing a mob, you know, throwing one to the mob, and it's like the old statement of

00:07:38.420 appeasement, where eventually they're going to come for you, your own freedoms, you're going to say

00:07:42.740 something, you're going to study something that some group or individual or such is going to say is

00:07:48.420 offensive. I don't want to hear it. And you're going to be thrown under the bus. And you set the

00:07:53.780 precedent to allow that to happen. Like the danger of this is immense. And what is the point of a

00:08:00.900 faculty association if they won't stand up for faculty?

00:08:04.100 Well, they said they stand up for some faculty, the faculty that they whose views they agree with,

00:08:09.620 and they don't stand up for faculty whose views they don't agree with. And this is totally goes against the

00:08:15.620 duty of fair representation. It's a massive failure of the labor relations framework in Alberta. And

00:08:22.980 this has really got to be one of the major targets right now and trying to get the faculty

00:08:28.020 associations to be to actually uphold their duty of fair representation, and defend all faculty members,

00:08:36.260 and accept the idea that it's important to discuss ideas, even if some people get upset by hearing those ideas.

00:08:46.260 Because it's not just about freedom of expression, everyone thinks about freedom of expression and your ability to speak your mind.

00:08:52.900 It's also about the ability of people to hear. So people have at a university should be able to hear different views,

00:09:02.580 evaluate those views, and determine whether those views have merit or not. They shouldn't have

00:09:09.620 a group of activists making a predetermined decision about what ideas can and cannot be heard. And that is a

00:09:17.860 huge problem now in all universities across the country. Yeah, and the other element you mentioned

00:09:23.780 was the faculty and the cowardice on their part. And we've seen that happen in a lot of universities

00:09:28.580 in Canada, as well as in Europe, we've seen it in the United States, when there's protests,

00:09:33.620 they always use the safety card. Oh, we're not doing it to shut down speech. But it just seems like

00:09:37.380 things might not be safe, even for the speaker. So we'll do it on your behalf. Even the speaker says,

00:09:40.980 I'm fine. Oh, no, no, no, we better stop. It's just, it's cowardice on their part,

00:09:46.660 though. I mean, some of those mobs are pretty aggressive. But I mean, that shouldn't be

00:09:51.140 tolerated. Capitulating to threats of violence isn't the way to deal with it, then up security,

00:09:56.580 if that's the case, or limited mission for people coming to these events, but faculty

00:10:00.980 just much prefers to shut the event down altogether. Well, that was the funny thing about

00:10:05.300 the University of Lethbridge, because I've been involved in talks at places like Wilfrid Laurier

00:10:10.340 University, where there actually was kind of threats that were being made. And so they blew that up

00:10:16.260 into, oh, well, we've got to have all this huge security fencing and all these sorts of things.

00:10:21.220 But at the case of the University of Lethbridge, it was made very clear by the protesters that they

00:10:27.620 were going to be nonviolent. So that wasn't even part of the calculus that happened with respect to

00:10:33.700 the president canceling the talk. He explicitly stated that the talk was being canceled, not because of

00:10:42.100 physical safety concerns, but because of psychological safety concerns, and the fact that

00:10:50.100 certain students felt that they would be harmed by hearing words with which they disagreed.

00:10:58.820 And this did a huge for the president. And then not only that, not only did the friends of the

00:11:03.060 president cancel the talk, after I tried to go to the university and make a speech in a public place,

00:11:09.860 just because I wanted to push back against being, you know, not being allowed to come on campus to

00:11:14.660 give a talk, I didn't want to be to be not be allowed to go there. Then there's this huge crowd

00:11:20.500 that shouted me down, what does the president do, he sends out a message the next day congratulating

00:11:27.620 the students and faculty members for what they did. You know, what kind of message does that send

00:11:32.900 from an academic leader, a supposed academic leader, who is having that attitude that it is acceptable

00:11:41.300 for people to, for a small group, a relatively small group of activists, because there were people

00:11:46.500 there who wanted to listen to me speak, for them to be able to have that power to shut down views with

00:11:53.140 which they disagree. It's just completely shocking.

00:11:55.540 Well, and so, I mean, a few years ago, there was a professor, he might still be at the University

00:12:01.140 of Lethbridge, it just popped into my head, his name escapes me, but he was an avowed Marxist,

00:12:04.820 he used to annoy the heck out of me. I mean, he was very controversial, in my view, and belligerent

00:12:09.220 and offensive in his views. He would soft pedal even things such as the actions of Stalin and the

00:12:14.180 people he harmed. And I couldn't stand that. But it never occurred to me for a second that he should be

00:12:19.220 fired or shut down or kicked out of the university. It's just that we should debate this, this man,

00:12:25.380 and lay out why his views are wrong and odious. But the mindset has changed now. And what does it

00:12:33.540 take? Or what can it? Well, what can we do? I guess is the question. I mean, it seems we've got a whole

00:12:38.180 generation of snowflake students coming up that have been taught that if you have a temper tantrum,

00:12:42.420 you don't have to hear anything that might offend your ears. Can we change this tide now, though?

00:12:47.940 It's going to be very difficult. And it's kind of funny, because I actually am a socialist myself.

00:12:53.700 So I do have a very critical view of capitalism. But it's, you know, people disagree with me,

00:12:58.900 and that's fine. And in fact, it's good for people to hear, if you're not a socialist,

00:13:05.380 what the socialist position is, so that you can more fully understand it. This is a huge battle now.

00:13:12.660 Many of my colleagues say it's over. We're not going to be able to save the university. I have a more

00:13:17.700 optimistic type of view myself. I think what is required is serious organization. So we need to

00:13:27.220 have organization at the university level, at the national level, and at the international level,

00:13:33.380 and somehow work to get all these entities kind of acting together. I am a board member for an

00:13:40.500 organization called the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, www.safs.ca.

00:13:49.460 And what we want to do in that organization is organize local chapters for each university.

00:13:55.620 And that's the kind of on the ground type of organizing work that has to be done,

00:14:01.940 so that you can introduce faculty members to other faculty members who want to protect

00:14:08.020 the academic character of the university. You can bring the students in who are interested in this.

00:14:13.460 You can bring in interested members of the public. So it's not very glamorous work to be doing that,

00:14:19.940 but it's really the only hope, I think, is to act in that way. And that's what I'm going to be

00:14:26.580 devoting the rest of my life to, I think, is to try to save universities. People don't realize how

00:14:34.020 important universities are in terms of being a bulwark against this art, you know, these autocratic

00:14:40.580 types of intrusions. If we lose our universities, we are going to have serious problems in terms of

00:14:48.660 these sort of totalitarian impulses that we see already that are trying to assert themselves in

00:14:55.940 Canadian society.

00:14:56.740 Well, that's it, because the graduates of these universities are going to be moving into senior

00:15:02.580 academic positions, senior bureaucratic positions in the country, they're going to be the regulators,

00:15:07.300 they're going to be the ones that are managing a lot of aspects of our lives very soon. And we would

00:15:14.020 like to think that they have some good, broad and tolerant views. But if they've been instilled with

00:15:19.460 such an attitude of entitlement and closed mindedness, as we're seeing right now, we could be seeing a lot of

00:15:24.820 much bigger trouble in 10 to 20 years.

00:15:26.980 Yes. And one of the big areas which really scares me is the legal profession, because we rely on our

00:15:34.180 courts to uphold principles such as the rule of law and equality under the law. Wokeism is completely

00:15:42.500 opposed to that, and has the idea of this intersectional scale of oppression. And if you are a

00:15:49.380 member of an oppressed group, somehow the law should treat you differently than other people. And this

00:15:55.620 is starting to infuse itself into the legal profession now. So I'm very, very worried that in not too long

00:16:02.660 in the future, we will see these fundamental principles of the legal system being overturned by

00:16:10.100 wokeism. And in fact, it's not far off. We had the ward decision, which was successful, upheld freedom of

00:16:17.940 expression. But I believe it was five, four was the decision. And that could have just you need one

00:16:23.780 more Supreme Court justice, who becomes starts to develop this kind of these kinds of woke ideas,

00:16:29.060 totalitarian identity politics. And that decision is going to be overturned. And we aren't going to

00:16:34.900 have freedom of expression rights anymore. As well, a very, very important example just happened.

00:16:40.820 Leah Gazan, the MP, NDP MP wants to criminalize, saying that the residential schools are not genocidal.

00:16:50.900 This is a major area of contention in, amongst historians, amongst many academics, for her to be

00:16:58.740 saying that you should, you should criminalize and put in jail, people who have a dissenting position on

00:17:05.060 this is just absolutely outrageous. And the fact that it's being accepted, and not there's not a huge

00:17:11.460 outpouring of opposition is an indication of how close we are to having complete, you know, autocratic

00:17:20.260 types of processes take over our society. Yeah, well, our elected officials, even the ones who have

00:17:26.500 trouble with it are afraid of that trap. And that's what it is, is a trap. Because if you speak against it,

00:17:30.580 you're saying, Oh, so you're trying to say the residential schools were good, or you, you're,

00:17:34.180 of course, the racist word is almost immediately thrown out if somebody questions it. And often,

00:17:39.780 they're just too scared to take on that battle. So they let it slide by. But when you have a legal

00:17:44.020 precedent that would shut down legally shut down discourse on something that's definitely still

00:17:50.420 very much in the investigative point of establishing in history. Boy, that's a river we don't want to cross.

00:17:58.340 It's true. And even if you know, it's an it's an idea that's wrong, like, like, you should be entitled

00:18:05.060 to be wrong. Because that's how we figure things out. If you don't want to utter something for fear

00:18:11.380 that it's, it's wrong, and therefore, it's not going to be allowed, then you will not be able to

00:18:15.940 enter into that investigation and see, you know, and it's possible there might be part of it that's

00:18:20.900 right, all these kinds of very, very complex kinds of questions that need to be examined openly.

00:18:28.260 And without fear, that you're going to be subjected to some kind of punishment,

00:18:33.540 just for trying to figure it out. And in the end, well, maybe it's incorrect. But you know,

00:18:38.740 still, you've learned something by being corrected, by trying to understand something more fully. So I

00:18:45.860 think the universities and what's happening in the universities is permeating into all aspects of

00:18:52.340 society. And I am very afraid for the future. You know, it wasn't that long ago where universities

00:18:59.460 were functioning properly. And really, it's only been in the last five, 10 years that we've had this

00:19:06.020 takeover. And it's on the move, it's not going to stop where it is now, it needs people to really take it

00:19:13.220 seriously, and really to fight back against it.

00:19:16.500 A couple of commenters, Terry French and Tom Abbott, I see the name, of course, Jordan Peterson

00:19:21.860 has come up. And I think of others like Gad Saad, though he hasn't been cancelled, he's been very

00:19:27.140 critical of these things. But it's typically once they're outside the institution, that they do that.

00:19:32.660 But I mean, there is new platforms being given, I guess, to some outspoken people that are gaining some

00:19:36.900 steam and, you know, bringing this into discussion. But do you think, you know, they can make change,

00:19:42.580 or are they going to be taking part in this organization of trying for, you know, academia

00:19:47.220 and supporting it?

00:19:47.780 I hope so. We have had Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad come and give talks at the Society

00:19:55.300 for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. You know, but it's difficult when you become a celebrity,

00:20:00.100 because then it's just, it's easier just to go and talk to large crowds, which is very,

00:20:05.700 I'm not trying to downplay that, because I think that that's very important. And both Gad Saad and

00:20:10.900 Jordan Peterson, I've learned a lot from them. I really enjoy listening to them, we disagree on

00:20:15.860 a number of things, obviously, but you know, that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But I admire

00:20:20.180 their, their principal defense of academic freedom and freedom of expression. But, you know, unfortunately,

00:20:27.700 the I think the, if it's going to be successful, trying to pull our universities back, it's going to be

00:20:34.900 doing the hard, unthank, you know, task that is not very glamorous, as I said before, of going into

00:20:44.260 each university and trying to find the people there, who support these principles, and then giving them

00:20:52.660 some kind of, of organizational support, because that's very, very important for professors, is that

00:20:59.540 if you stand up for the university, and you're an individual, you will be taken out, there's no doubt

00:21:07.380 about it. And there, these administrators, and you don't have your faculty association to protect you.

00:21:14.260 So you need organization, you need serious help with, you know, supporting you, giving you the resources

00:21:20.100 that you need to fight back against it. That is the kind of work that has to be done. And I am currently,

00:21:26.580 you know, once I get through all my own, you know, difficulties with Mount Royal University,

00:21:32.820 I'm really looking forward to working much more in a hands on fashion, at the local university level,

00:21:39.940 and trying to tie each of those universities in to the national organization that is in existence. And

00:21:46.180 then the very, very good international organizations, I just meant, I mentioned FIRE, which is the foundation

00:21:52.340 for individual rights and expression, I think, in the United States, the free speech union,

00:21:57.860 in the United Kingdom, there's a number of organizations like this, but the problem is,

00:22:02.260 we're all kind of working, sort of separately, when we need to kind of have this sort of networking

00:22:09.220 type of approach, where we tie everyone together, so that we can act in a more kind of unified,

00:22:16.580 organized fashion, to try to save our universities, which are failing, which are failing terribly. And

00:22:24.740 anyone who doesn't think there's a problem is not paying attention to what's happening in universities.

00:22:30.900 My case is very, very important. It's going through arbitration, May, June, and I believe November and

00:22:39.300 December of this year. And hopefully that case, and with my reinstatement, I'm fighting hard for

00:22:45.220 reinstatement back into Mount Royal University. And if I'm not, if I'm not reinstated, universities are

00:22:51.460 over, because I have done nothing wrong. And it's just the complete abuse of power by Mount Royal

00:22:57.540 University, which has allowed this to happen.

00:22:59.460 Well, I certainly do hope that your challenge against Mount Royal is successful. And I really want

00:23:04.420 your group to take off. I'll point people as well, you wrote a great extended piece in Sea to

00:23:09.220 Sea journal.ca. It's called into walking woke isms raging ma. And for looking that up, guys,

00:23:16.260 it's letter C number two, letter C, it makes it hard to Google it sometimes journal.ca. But look it

00:23:21.860 up. It's well worth a read. And you'll get a lot more background on what's going on with Professor

00:23:25.780 Whitteson. And before I let you go, where else can people find information then on what you're working

00:23:30.500 on?

00:23:30.820 Yes, so there's a website that's been developed about my case. It's called www.wokeacademy.info.

00:23:39.780 There's an area there about the fought my firing, which has, I believe it's 16 episodes about what

00:23:45.700 went on there. As well, there's information that's posted onto the blog that's happened there. And I

00:23:52.020 do a lot of posting now on my Facebook page as well. So there's a lot of information that I post

00:23:57.060 on a daily basis on my Facebook page, which gives people a lot of information.

00:24:01.380 Great. Well, thank you again for coming on to talk to us today and for keeping up the fight

00:24:05.940 rather than just kind of giving up and going into retirement like so many do. I can understand the

00:24:09.380 temptation for it. So I hope we can talk again soon and perhaps be talking about a success on one level

00:24:16.580 or another.

00:24:17.700 Thank you very much.

00:24:18.580 Great. Thank you.

00:24:20.020 Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago. These guys are on the front

00:24:25.540 lines helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada,

00:24:32.260 and more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong

00:24:36.980 people. To become a member, it's absolutely worth every penny. You can become a Western 0.90

00:24:43.620 Center member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.

Western Standard - March 02, 2023

Prof Frances Widdowson on cancel culture & the threats to post secondary education

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript